Mail Online are reporting on Operation Hydrant, a police investigation into 58 allegations of abuse against Dr Kenneth Milner, who was the superintendent of Aston Hall Children’s Hospital from 1947 to 1975, and also into associated practices at the hospital. Former patients are alleging inappropriate use of drugs, sexual assault and detention in padded cells. Milner died in 1976.

I’m waiting then. Dr T. Gwynne Williams died in 1986 – can we now uncover the truth about the lobotomies, as opposed to the rubbish that Dr David Crossley has published regarding ‘the history of psychosurgery at the North Wales Hospital’, whilst Crossley worked there himself. Questions that need to be answered include:

How many people did Williams actually lobotomise? What exactly was so problematic about their behaviour that this was deemed necessary and who was reporting on the alleged problematic behaviour? How many people did he manage to kill whilst lobotomising them? What happened to their bodies? When did the lobotomies actually stop?

Can I remind everyone that although Williams is dead, Dr Dafydd Alun Jones is still alive – but he won’t be for much longer, he is well into his eighties. And there’s enough allegations about him on this blog alone to warrant a life sentence if he was put on trial and found guilty, so perhaps someone could give the police a prod to hurry up and investigate him and Dr Peter Higson for the serious wrongdoing that they were undoubtedly involved in before the North Wales Hospital closed it’s doors. Obvious questions to be answered are:

How many people – apart from Mary Wynch and me – were illegally imprisoned there? Who was the young lady whom I blogged about in my post ‘The Distressed Young Woman Who Vanished’? Who were the men that sexually assaulted her? Who was the doctor who abducted her and imprisoned her in the ‘attic’ that she described? Where did she disappear to within hours of telling me this? Where exactly was ‘downstairs’, the place that patients feared so much, what went on ‘downstairs’ and has anyone conducted a search of the North Wales Hospital to have a look to see if anything interesting is still ‘downstairs’? What happened to the patients whom a psychiatrist in Ysbyty Gwynedd told me had been ‘hidden away’ in the North Wales Hospital by Dr Dafydd Alun Jones when it closed down?

Just a note to the North Wales Police – can you start this investigation as soon as possible please? Not only is Dafydd in danger of dying imminently, but former patients of Denbigh have died at a rate that rivals the people who made complaint about the paedophile ring that was known to be operating in the north Wales children’s homes. You know, the paedophile ring that was concealed by Lucille Hughes, Dafydd’s former mistress….

Author: Sally Baker

I am a writer and a sociologist, originally from Somerset, but I’ve been based in Wales for most of my life. I had my first encounter with a mental health professional in 1984 at the age of 21. My GP described this man to my then partner – who also became a sociologist – as someone who had experienced ‘considerable success’. My meeting with this psychiatrist was a disaster and we attempted to complain about his insensitivity and highly inappropriate behaviour. That was the first time we were threatened and pressurised to withdraw a complaint against a mental health professional. This man is long dead – he was a retired psychiatrist from the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, T. Gwynne Williams, who was working shifts in the student health centre at University College of North Wales (now Bangor University). We discovered years later that this ‘successful man’ was notorious – he had been an enthusiastic lobotomist…

Had you contacted me whilst I was researching, I would have done my utmost to trigger a police investigation into the hospital, as I successfully did with Aston Hall Hospital at the request of a couple of it’s former patients.
Unfortunately, after triggering several police investigations across the UK but still getting no Justice for myself in regard to North Wales or Calderdale, I have had to quit.

Thanks for e mailing. I didn’t know about you when you were researching or I would certainly have been keen to link up with you.
I am sorry to hear that you had to give up; there certainly is no justice for victims of welfare professionals who have abused their position in terms of redress through the courts or via any official complaints avenue – that is why I started this blog. Don’t blame yourself, the deficit will not have been on your part, we are dealing with institutionalised corruption at the highest levels. You would not have been able to trigger an investigation into the North Wales Hospital Denbigh – people died out there, people were illegally imprisoned out there, victims of paedophiles were incarcerated there, patients were sexually abused by staff, other patients were fleeced of their property/money and there was an underground chamber where patients were held. None of these things were a secret. No-one would have investigated no matter what evidence anyone produced. Those of us who are still alive need to publish.

As you know MILNER was a cttee colleague at Royal Medico Psychological Society with William Sargent and John Howells (Ipswich Family Psychiatric Centre) Sargents and Howells records were destroyed. Howells was contracted to Cambridge Uni four days per week to research and I doubt any of his family patients knew this.

The cybernetics theory that created the various shock therapies (Insulin malarial electro convulsive) seems to have been in play. Howells theories of vector therapy and building blocks to a salutiferous society … mad as a box of frogs IMO. How dared the NHS set these Mengeles loose on the families of Suffolk ?

Migraine children were ill due to psychopathic disorder and asthma children were psychopathic perfectionists !! By adjusting the parental vectors the asthma and migraine in children would salutiferously self heal. They may well have had more success blowing smoke up the parents arses.
GPs not in the Suffolk research movement were assured the treatments were drug free,

So imagine how p-ssed off our GP was when he caught my dad giving me aged 8 a combination of ephedrine and quinine from the Howells clinic prescribed off record. Although my parents continued with Howells clinic I never went again thank goodness.

I am a little suspicious re Aston Hall why the records were preserved ? The research was sanctioned by Home Office psychiatrist Pamela Mason I think And a cupboard door in the derelict old building preserved with the signwritten name of the drug etc

Pamela Mason’s name has popped up in a number of contexts relating to malpractice, including the abuse of ‘disturbed’ teenagers – she and her husband (who worked in the film industry) were involved with Duncroft School, the institution in which teenaged girls were molested by Savile.

There is absolutely no doubt at all that senior figures in Gov’t, in medicine and other bodies have known about the abuse – which sometimes resulted in death – of psych patients and kids in care for years. Generation after generation concealed it. I have been sent an historical document relating to the North Wales Hospital Denbigh dating from 1914 – even then Denbigh had a reputation for ‘cruelty’. The names of people sitting on the overseeing committee were the forebears of some of those named on this blog.

In recent years psychiatry has desperately tried to distance itself from its shameful history and figures like Sargant which is why we hear so much drivel from them concerning ‘stigma’ and ’empowerment’. The profession has not changed – it is a discipline based on coercion and the pathologising of patients. The arrogance and denial is so entrenched that the profession just cannot change. It is sitting in its own crap and all we hear is how everything would be better if only they were all given even more money. The consultants are on nearly £100k pa, the senior nurses on £40k. The patients are usually in poverty. The staff whom the patients usually have the highest praise for are support workers and healthcare assistants – who go unrecognised. Psychiatry as a discipline has failed dismally, we need to stop believing that it has the answer – it doesn’t and never will have, no matter how much money is thrown at it. The resources should be reinvested in a structure staffed by people who have the skills and motivation to effectively support patients, not a profession so moribund and dysfunctional that it cannot attract high calibre graduates.